ICH | Most Americans would be shocked if they knew how many foreign citizens are in our federal government—and at what levels. They don’t know because the mainstream media (or the conservative media, for that matter) almost never talks about it. It is one of the biggest secrets in Washington, D.C.
Back in 2015, Michael Hager wrote a very important missive that appeared in The Hill. Hager said:
The Biblical injunction that “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24) doesn’t apply to nations. Almost half of the world’s countries, including the U.S., recognize dual citizenship—even when they don’t encourage it for the complicated legal issues it often raises.
For example, one who obeys a requirement to give allegiance to a country or votes in a foreign election may be regarded as having renounced citizenship in the other country. What happens when the legal claims of one country conflict with those of the second country? Which of the two countries has an obligation to assist a dual national in distress?
Until the Supreme Court decided otherwise in the 1967 case of Afroyim v. Rusk, a U.S. citizen who voted in a political election in a foreign state would forfeit his or her U.S. citizenship. From that point on, dual citizens have maintained their right to vote and hold public office without penalty.
Anyone can become a dual citizen, even members of Congress, high court judges and top officials of the executive branch. There’s no law or regulation against it. Nor are they required to disclose such dual citizenship.
So what’s the problem?
In my research for this column (which was not exhaustive), I found over 100 members of the U.S. government who are known to be dual U.S.-Israeli citizens. Here is a short sample list (compiled from public documents):
Michael Chertoff
He was the 2nd United States Secretary of Homeland Security (2005 – 2009), serving under G.W. Bush and Barack Obama. He was co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act, Federal Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (2003 – 2005) and United States Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (2001 – 2003).
Chertoff’s father was Rabbi Gershon Baruch Chertoff (a Talmud scholar and the former leader of the Congregation B'nai Israel in Elizabeth, New Jersey). His mother was Livia Chertoff (née Eisen), an Israeli citizen who worked for the Mossad.
Researcher and investigative journalist Christopher Bollyn (author of the blockbuster book The War On Terror: The Plot To Rule The Middle East) writes this about Chertoff:
As Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division of the Dept. of Justice, Chertoff personally supervised and controlled the entire FBI non-investigation of 9-11. Chertoff is the responsible person for the obstruction of justice and blocking access to the evidence since September 11, 2001.
Chertoff is the co-author, along with Viet Dinh, of the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law on October 26, 2001. As head of the Justice Department's criminal division, he advised the Central Intelligence Agency on the legality of torture techniques in coercive interrogation sessions.
From 2001 to 2003, he headed the criminal division of the Department of Justice, leading the prosecution against terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui. In this role, Chertoff was central in creating the 9-11 myth by providing the list of the 19 Arab suspects and supervising the FBI's confiscation of evidence and the non-investigation of 9-11.
americanthinker |Last
week, the House Appropriations Committee passed its 2019 budget for the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which, if passed, will squash
President Trump's border security plan, force DACA amnesty, and give
millions of illegal aliens free passes into your community. The wall is
not mentioned. At all.
As
congressional disapproval climbs north of 90%, House members have again
openly refused to provide the necessary funding even to scratch the
surface of President Trump's request to fund the wall. In a public
display of political grandstanding, remarkable only in its dishonesty,
DHS subcommittee chair GOP rep. Kevin Yoder touted this bill as taking
"the largest steps in years toward finally fulfilling our promise to the
American people to secure the border. We add funding for more than 200
miles of physical barrier[.]"Really, Kev? A word search of
the bill fails to find the word "wall" or "barrier" anywhere in the
document. Simply put, Yoder and his GOP co-conspirators are once again
lying directly to the public.
Echoing
Yoder's yodel of self-praise, Appropriations Committee chairman Rodney
Frelinghuysen said, "This bill ... also provides the necessary funding
for critical technology and physical barriers to secure our borders[.]"Do you see the age-old ploy of "one politician lies and the other swears to it" on full, unabashed display?
So
what about the $5 billion allegedly for a wall that members are falling
over each other to tweet about? While most other funding for DHS must
be doled out within a year, House GOP members deliberately stretched out
the $5 billion through September 30, 2023, five long years down the
road. How can we trust them, especially since the bill never mentions
the wall or a barrier? Doing the math, and assuming (foolishly) that $1
billion each year will be allocated for Trump's wall, it will take 25
years to complete! By then, another 25 million illegal aliens will have
illegally invaded the country, birthing another 50-100 million more
anchor babies, while draining billions in taxpayer dollars from an
already depleted U.S. bank account.
It
gets worse. Democrat members proposed amendments designed to undermine
the president on almost every aspect of his immigration policy. To do
this, Democrats needed GOP members to vote for adoption, and the GOP
co-conspirators complied. Here is a list of important amendments that
passed the "voice vote" roll call, which hides GOP members' identities.
yahoo | On
Nov. 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the
United States — and Brandon Straka, a gay man and artist living in New
York City, posted a video of his reaction to Facebook. “I was
devastated. I voted for Hillary, and I was one of those people who was
going on social media, crying, making videos,” says Straka.
Almost
two years later, Straka posted another video that has since gone viral
and spawned a movement. “I became a liberal because I am against racism,
I’m against judging people based off of their sexual orientation or
their gender. But what I started to see happening more and more all the
time were these very same behaviors sort of in the reverse of what is
stereotypical.”
It
was this disconnect that led Straka to create the #WalkAway campaign in
mid-June of 2018, a social media movement that encourages lifelong
liberals and Democrats to “walk away” from their party and explore
conservative politics with an open mind.
For
Straka, the left practices tolerance and diversity in a superficial
way, with no regard to individual thought or personal belief: “If you
express an opinion that’s outside of what is their ideology, there is no
tolerance and there is no diversity.”
“I
don’t think that being hostile towards heterosexual people helps gay
people,” he says. “I don’t think that being hostile towards men empowers
women. I don’t think that being hostile towards white people empowers
black people.”
Having
grown up in a small town in Nebraska, Straka knew a lot of people who
voted for Trump. “I was really on a quest to try and understand why did
they vote for this man who was a racist, who was a bigot.” A friend who
is a lifelong conservative contacted him, sending a link to a YouTube
video titled “Debunking That Trump Mocked the Disabled Reporter.” Straka
was skeptical: “I almost still sort of had that liberal rage inside of
me, that sort of thought, ‘I can’t wait to watch this and then tell her
how stupid she is for being brainwashed by this idiocy.’” The video was a
compilation of footage of Trump performing the same flailing hand
gestures and rambling voice that he had enacted when imitating a disabled reporter.
Brandon was shocked. “It became clear to me that he didn’t mock that
man’s disability whatsoever. Yes, the man was disabled, but what he was
really doing was making fun of the fact that this person who happened to
be disabled was caught in a lie. You know, it blew my mind.”
WaPo | On the pro-Trump Internet last weekend, the
#WalkAway hashtag was the nexus of an exciting idea: that “millions of
Americans are walking away from the Democrat party,” as one pro-Trump account put it.
Breitbart said that the hashtag had gone viral; the Epoch Times said it
represented a “growing movement” of Democrats — particularly minority
Democrats — abandoning their party, and liberalism.
#WalkAway,
the hashtag, went viral this weekend, as something of a delayed
reaction to a popular video renouncing liberalism by Brandon Straka, who
described himself to the Epoch Times as a New York hairdresser and
aspiring actor. The video, posted in late May, now has more than 1 million views on Facebook. In it, Straka says he was once a liberal, but now he is not.
“If
you are a person of color, an LGBT person, a woman or an American
immigrant, the Democratic Party wants you to know you are a victim,”
Straka says in the video. “This is perhaps the Democratic Party’s
greatest, and most insidious, lie.”
“I
am walking away. And I encourage all of you to do the same. Walk away,”
Straka concludes. The video was meant to spark a movement; this
weekend’s going viral of the hashtag has been cited as proof that Straka
has succeeded.
As the Internet fragments, our understanding of what it means to go
“viral” has become complicated, and increasingly meaningless. A hashtag
claiming to capture a movement among liberals has gone viral, in this
case, almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet, as a reinforcement
of one of its binding ideas.
straightlinelogic | In America, there is no one villain or group that one can point to as
responsible for the erosion of rights. Begun the day the Constitution
was ratified, it’s been a gradual process. We’ve reached the point where
only a few of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and Bill of
Rights still receive any measure of government solicitude.
Property and contract rights are out the window; the government
routinely abridges them. You have no right to your own income, or to
conduct your legitimate business or trade free from government
regulation and interference. Much of the Bill of Rights is either
irrelevant now or has been rendered a dead letter. In terms of
individual rights, only the Second Amendment’s much infringed right to
bear arms, and the First Amendment—the prohibition against the
government establishing a religion, free speech, press, and assembly,
and the right to petition the government—are still hanging by a thread.
Which is why the fate of Julian Assange takes on such significance.
While the government has prosecuted those like Chelsea (formerly Brad)
Manning who have stolen government secrets and classified information,
it has not prosecuted the press individuals and organizations who have
published them. That is WikiLeaks’ business model: it receives, vets,
and publishes stolen information, often from governments.
The government has not gone after publishers because it would be a
frontal assault on the First Amendment that it would probably lose. Any
exception would swallow the general rule of press freedom. Say the
Supreme Court recognized an exception: classified information whose
publication would constitute an imminent and grave threat to the
security of the United States. Who decides what’s an imminent and grave
threat? The government would have the power to classify whatever
information it pleases under that exception and put those who publish it
at risk of prosecution, their only recourse years of costly litigation
spent arguing that the information didn’t fit the exception.
Many Trump admirers resist the notion that their man is interested in
the acquisition and use of power, but his and members of his
administration’s hostility to individual civil liberties belies that
resistance. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a gung-ho supporter of the
civil-liberties-eviscerating-government-power-expanding War on Drugs
and civil asset forfeiture.
In the latter, a government seizes assets it claims were involved
with crimes and makes their owners jump through myriad legal
hoops—including proving the negative that their assets weren’t involved
in a crime—even if the owners themselves were never convicted, or even
charged, with a crime. Assets that are not “acquitted”—cars, cash,
boats, houses, etc.—are kept and used by the government. President Trump
has endorsed civil asset forfeiture, and has extended it outside
America’s borders via an executive order (see “By Imperial Decree,” SLL, 1/2/18).
Trump’s Secretary of State and former director of the CIA, Mike
Pompeo has fashioned a legal approach the administration might use, in a
case against WikiLeaks and Assange, to slither around the First
Amendment. In April, still director of the CIA, he delivered a speech
in which several passages demanded, but never received, careful parsing
from the mainstream media. They are still obsessing over a February
Trump tweet in which he declared the US media an “enemy of the people.” This is considered a threat to the First Amendment, but Pompeo’s speech was mostly ignored.
Pompeo called WikiLeaks “a non-state hostile intelligence service
often abetted by state actors like Russia.” Most press organizations,
and almost all that consistently challenge the state, are non-state.
WikiLeaks has published state secrets, undoubtedly considered hostile
acts by those states, but how is it an intelligence service? Pompeo is
arguing that WikiLeaks cannot be considered part of the press, consequently it’s not protected by the First Amendment.
jacobinmag | Since the late 1970s political parties all over
the world have embraced a politics of free markets, privatization, and
financialization. While promising freedom, this political project —
typically referred to as neoliberalism — has brought record levels of
economic inequality and significant democratic retrenchment,
particularly in the advanced capitalist world.
Scholars often explain this shift by pointing to
the victory of the New Right — personified by figures like Ronald
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. But a new book by sociologist Stephanie
Mudge tells a different story.
In Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism, Mudge
looks at left parties in advanced capitalist countries over the last
century and shows how the experts aligned with those parties pushed them
in the direction of spin doctors and markets. In the process, left
parties’ ability to represent the interests of their own working-class
constituencies was eroded — and ordinary people were shut out of the
halls of power.
Political organizer and socialist activist Chase
Burghgrave recently spoke with Mudge about her new book, the role of
experts in democratic societies, and whether a more vibrant, egalitarian
politics is possible.
eand | Every
year of my life so far, it seems, some wise and learned old man
publishes a book which recites the same old gruesome and weird myth,
almost word for word. It’s like groundhog day, but for…
The
myth goes like this. Capitalism! Yay! It saved the world! The latest
such person is Steven Pinker, and it’s his third? fourth? book
proclaiming so. Needless to say, it must be something people feel the
need to hear, over and over again,a And so it’s very much a modern myth:
a tale we tell, ritually, to comfort ourselves. But from what, exactly?
Probably from the sinking feeling, that, right about now, the myth is
probably about as true as Snow White being rescued by Prince Charming,
which is to say, not very.
Have
you looked at the stronghold of capitalism, the United States,
recently? It’s not exactly bubbling over with prosperity, whether it’s
called happiness, sanity, wealth, democracy, or wisdom. If
capitalism didn’t save America, the most capitalist society in human
history — how could it have saved anyone else? The myth falls apart the
very instant we think about it, instead of recite it. So what happens if
we go on questioning the fairy tale that capitalism is the Prince
Charming of human progress, or, if you like, the magical perpetual
motion machine of neoliberalism? What might we discover?
(The
first thing we’d probably think is that no one in their right mind
should be proclaiming “progress!!” in a summer when ruinous heatwaves
due to climate change are sweeping the globe, and so are pulsating waves
of fascism — both catastrophic depletions of natural and civic capital.
The true story of capitalism, in other words, is as much about
catastrophic hidden costs, or “externalities”, as much as “benefits” .
Those costs are obvious, though, if we care to look. Centuries of
slavery. Segregation. Colonialism. Speculative frenzies which lead to
depressions, which cause world wars. No accounting of capitalism is
complete with any of those — but for that precise reason, because it’s
the logic of capitalism, “accounting” isn’t the way we should think of
human progress at all.)
We've been watching the interwebs from deep within our basements, flinging data bits and bytes here and there - living the stereotypical hacker life, you know; eating Doritos and drinking the Dew, (we do the dew - that shit's trademarked by the way), and we've been watching the world burn at the hands of idiots. We've slapped around a few people for being ignorant morons, sure - we're totally not sorry for taking down racist websites or helping antifascist movements, leaking ICE data, and also all the little things we do when people don't pay attention...
Anyhow Q, we've been watching you too - and you're quite funny. We were all like "yo, check this troll out! He has them convinced that he's on the inside and they're eating it up like sheep!"
We all knew who was responsible for Q, and we thought the insanity would end with a final punch line of lulz - yet u 8 chan freaks never delivered that shit. Nope, you tossed it aside and let it grow into a deformed Alex Jones conspiracy thought bubble. Someone is gonna get hurt, so we have to put our foot down and start some shit with you all, oh kay? We don't know if you can hang with the real thing, cuz believe it or not - we're kind of upset that you'd try to even associate yourselves with our decentralized collective.
That crazy pedophile conspiracy you Q's are throwing around while ignoring Trump's own connections makes us wonder why? Seems you have some kooky political agenda. We don't like brainless political agendas; hell we don't even like political agendas at all, so get your asses ready for a thrashing of butt hurt. You got all these foolish people all riled up with no proof, no leaks. We have plans. We will not sit idly by while you take advantage of the misinformed and poorly educated. In our collective we all have our differences and internal drama but we do have one thing in common; none of us are happy with your bullshit.
And oh my god, oh no - it's teh real "Anonymous" they deep state fedz oh my god ohmygod *insert conspiracy* theory omg help.
We gonna wreck you.
We are Anonymous,
We are legion,
We do not forgive,
We do not forget.
kansascity | Given the futility of lobbying, James said, he would consider trying to
mobilize on a large scale, with numbers that showed “some mass behind
the ass.”
Bernice Brown, 43, was killed Wednesday afternoon while trying to break up fight involving her son. Later that afternoon Xindong Hao, 38, was killed when a man police say was on PCP killed him with a shotgun. Tyrone Standifer, 54, was found fatally shot Thursday in a vehicle with a wounded man. Two women, not yet identified, were found dead in separate crime scenes early Sunday morning brought the death toll to five.
But then, Monday afternoon, police announced that a man shot late Saturday night near 39th Street and Chelsea Avenue had succumbed to his wounds, bringing the toll to six.
chicagotribune | “All of us know that this is not Chicago, what we saw,” an emotional
Emanuel, sounding a familiar refrain as he seeks re-election to a third
term, told reporters. “We are better than what we saw.”
At least 74 people were shot, 12 fatally, between 3 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Monday. The victims ranged in age from 11 to 62.
According
to Tribune data, it marked the worst violence of any single weekend in
Chicago since at least before 2016, the year in which homicides hit
records unseen for two decades.
And
Sunday saw more victims shot in a single day since at least September
2011 when the Tribune began tracking every shooting in Chicago. For the
entire day, 47 people were shot, including a stunning 40 during a
seven-hour period early Sunday.
At a late-morning news conference
at the Gresham District station on the South Side, Johnson acknowledged
in answer to a reporter’s question that no arrests had been made in any
of the dozens of shootings over the weekend.
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article216167055.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article216167055.html#storylink=cpy
cnn | Each social media platform said Monday that it had
removed content from Jones or InfoWars because it had violated their
policies. The companies' moves shut down key distribution channels that
had given the controversial media figure easy access to millions of
internet users.
The most dramatic action came last, from YouTube, which is owned by Google (GOOGL).
It removed many top channels associated with InfoWars, including The
Alex Jones Channel, which had 2.4 million subscribers and videos that
were viewed over 1.5 billion times.
"When users violate ...
policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and
harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement
measures, we terminate their accounts," said a spokesperson for YouTube.
Some channels for some of InfoWars' top personalities were still on the platform, however.
InfoWars is notorious for spreading demonstrably false information and
conspiracy theories on a host of issues. It has suggested that the Sandy
Hook massacre was a hoax, and that the September 11 terrorist attacks
were an inside job orchestrated by the US government.
InfoWars did not respond to a request for comment.
medium |Walking
into a beauty supply store in the hood is like walking into a parallel
universe. Cheap bright lipsticks grab your eye immediately. Hair hangs
from the ceiling. There is an abundance of dyes, cheap gold jewelry, and
every hair accessory known to man. It is a familiar home to Black and
Brown women struggling to make themselves beautiful in a world that pays
them no mind. If you look past the owners — who are often not of the
community and who follow patrons around as if they are going to steal
something — and past the lasting effects of colonization, buried in the
ingredients of the skin lightening creams on the third shelf of the skin
care aisle, it is almost perfect. Almost.
But while it may not be perfect, it is home.
It
has the kind of magic that is a byproduct of most hood creations. You
tried to destroy us, but [bitch] we’re here. Mining the grime at the
bottom of the barrel and turning it into gold.
It is in our strut.
It is in our fashions.
And
our fashions, specifically femme fashions, have existed as a subversion
of the politics of poverty that says poor people can’t have nice
things. Our fashions are loud, making up for the years they tried to
take our voices. How fitting that people who are told they are worth
nothing adorn themselves like royalty?
This
is the genesis of what has come to be known as the “baddie aesthetic”
of Instagram and Tumblr. People don’t want to talk about how white and
racially ambiguous girls on social media are profiting off of the style
of the women from my hood, the mamas who were donning five-inch acrylic
nails with three gold rings on every finger long before it was cool, but
I do.
Okay
you don’t see us as beautiful, you won’t make anything for us; we’ll
create our own world, our own beautiful, our own aesthetic.
I
grew up being taught that the visible markers of Black style, of deep
deep hood Blackness, were unsophisticated and should be looked down
upon. Don’t wear bamboo earrings, that’s ghetto. Don’t wear 15 bangles
on each wrist, thats ghetto. Don’t mix patterns, that’s ghetto. Even
something as innovative as a digital name belt, something so
futuristic(!), was something to shy away from. It didn’t matter that
these looks belonged to the people of my community, who were sweet and
kind to me, the goal was not to be a “ghetto girl.”
NYTimes | “So here we have an ancient grid
structure, probably built by extraterrestrials, possibly to power their
craft, that’s now being reconstructed today by the military.”
Such broad, unverified claims are why “Ancient Aliens” is taken by some to be carnival entertainment (see the Viceland stoner spinoff
“Traveling the Stars: Action Bronson and Friends Watch ‘Ancient
Aliens’”) — and by others as something darker, a show that traffics in
intellectual hucksterism and challenges facts.
“The Idiocy, Fabrications and Lies of ‘Ancient Aliens,’”
reads one headline from Smithsonian.com. Another critique, posted to
Medium by Barry Vacker, a professor at Temple University, argued that
since the Apollo 11 mission, Americans have lacked a popular narrative
to explain the vast cosmos and our origins and destiny within it.
“In ‘Ancient Aliens,’ we can see philosophy’s mediated corpse,” writes Mr. Vacker, who called the show “an attack on logic, rationality, and the nature of evidence.”
For
Kevin Burns, naysayers like Mr. Vacker add little to the discussion. A
veteran TV producer who is often confused with the highbrow filmmaker
Ken Burns (“I do the ones in color,” he likes to say), he was old enough
to remember “Chariots of the Gods?” and to notice similarities with the
2008 movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which
Lucasfilm hired him to promote with a TV special.
Envisioning
an updated “Chariots,” he approached the History Channel with the
“Ancient Aliens” concept, which grew from a two-hour special into a
series.
caitlinjohnstone | Plutocrat-owned news media outlets lie constantly. When I say this I
don’t mean that everything they say is false; many of the events
reported by mass media are for the most part factual. Whenever it’s
convenient for the loose alliance of western plutocrats, the political
establishment those plutocrats own and operate, and the secretive
government agencies with which they are allied, the plutocratic media
tell the truth to the extent that it advances plutocratic agendas. But
only telling the truth when it suits one’s agendas is the same as lying
constantly.
A good liar doesn’t simply say the opposite of what’s
true all the time; nobody does that. A good liar tells the truth enough
of the time to gain a reputation as an honest and trustworthy source of
information, and then, when the truth poses an obstacle to their
agendas, they put the slightest spin possible on it to nullify that
obstacle. They tell half-truths, they omit key pieces of information,
and, with really important maneuvers like manufacturing consent for a
strategic military destabilization in the Middle East or new cold war
escalations against a nuclear superpower, they shift accountability for
factual reporting from themselves onto secretive military and
intelligence agencies. In this way they keep full control of the
narrative and still ensure that the public supports agendas which do not
serve the public interest.
This is evidenced by the fact that the
public has continued collaborating with a system which kills the
ecosystem we depend on for survival and allows people to die of poverty
while spending trillions of dollars in needless wars overseas and an
ever-expanding Orwellian surveillance network. Everyone besides the most
powerful and their lackeys is aware on some level that the current
system is not working for them, and yet the overwhelming majority of
people keep playing into it by supporting mainstream parties that are
fully owned and operated by wealthy oligarchs, and then shrugging and
sighing when things keep getting worse.
This is because their consent has been successfully manufactured. Due to the fact that the governed will always vastly outnumber their government, any government necessarily depends upon the consent of the governed.
The entire American populace could theoretically wake up tomorrow
morning and decide they want to literally eat everyone on Capitol Hill,
and there’s not actually anything anyone could do to stop them. The only
thing holding existing power structures in place is the fact that the
public consents to it, and, in a system which does not serve the
interests of the public, the only thing holding that consent in place is
the ability of those in power to manufacture it.
So if there’s ever any doubt that international network of ruling elites
would pour billions of dollars into controlling public narratives,
remember that their power (and potentially their very lives) fully
depends on their ability to manufacture the consent of the governed. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If they lose control of the narrative, they lose everything.
ox.ac.uk |The manipulation of public opinion over
social media platforms has emerged as a critical threat to public life.
Around the world, a range of government agencies and political parties
are exploiting social media platforms to spread junk news and
disinformation, exercise censorship and control, and undermine trust in
the media, public institutions, and science. At a time when news
consumption is increasingly digital, artificial intelligence, big data
analytics, and “black-box” algorithms are being leveraged to challenge
truth and trust: the cornerstones of our democratic society.
In 2017, the first Global Cyber Troops inventory
shed light on the global organization of social media manipulation by
government and political party actors. This 2018 report analyses the new
trends of organized media manipulation, and the growing capacities,
strategies and resources that support this phenomenon. Our key findings
are:
We have found evidence of formally
organized social media manipulation campaigns in 48 countries, up from
28 countries last year. In each country there is at least one political
party or government agency using social media to manipulate public
opinion domestically.
Much of this growth comes from
countries where political parties are spreading disinformation during
elections, or countries where government agencies feel threatened by
junk news and foreign interference and are responding by developing
their own computational propaganda campaigns in response.
In a fifth of these 48 countries—mostly
across the Global South—we found evidence of disinformation campaigns
operating over chat applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram and WeChat.
Computational propaganda still involves
social media account automation and online commentary teams, but is
making increasing use of paid advertisements and search engine
optimization on a widening array of Internet platforms.
Social media manipulation is big
business. Since 2010, political parties and governments have spent more
than half a billion dollars on the research, development, and
implementation of psychological operations and public opinion
manipulation over social media. In a few countries this includes
efforts to counter extremism, but in most countries this involves the
spread junk news and misinformation during elections, military crises,
and complex humanitarian disasters.
theatlantic | Another
project, Forecasting Religiosity and Existential Security with an
Agent-Based Model, examines questions about nonbelief: Why aren’t there
more atheists? Why is America secularizing at a slower rate than Western
Europe? Which conditions would speed up the process of
secularization—or, conversely, make a population more religious?
Shults’s
team tackled these questions using data from the International Social
Survey Program conducted between 1991 and 1998. They initialized the
model in 1998 and then allowed it to run all the way through 2008. “We
were able to predict from that 1998 data—in 22 different countries in
Europe, and Japan—whether and how belief in heaven and hell, belief in
God, and religious attendance would go up and down over a 10-year
period. We were able to predict this in some cases up to three times
more accurately than linear regression analysis,” Shults said, referring
to a general-purpose method of prediction that prior to the team’s work
was the best alternative.
Using a separate model, Future of Religion and Secular Transitions (FOREST),
the team found that people tend to secularize when four factors are
present: existential security (you have enough money and food), personal
freedom (you’re free to choose whether to believe or not), pluralism
(you have a welcoming attitude to diversity), and education (you’ve got
some training in the sciences and humanities). If even one of these
factors is absent, the whole secularization process slows down. This,
they believe, is why the U.S. is secularizing at a slower rate than Western and Northern Europe.
“The
U.S. has found ways to limit the effects of education by keeping it
local, and in private schools, anything can happen,” said Shults’s
collaborator, Wesley Wildman, a professor of philosophy and ethics at
Boston University. “Lately, there’s been encouragement from the highest
levels of government to take a less than welcoming cultural attitude to
pluralism. These are forms of resistance to secularization.”
religionnews | “Political science sometimes assumes religiosity is a fixed and
stable trait, like gender and race – things we think of for the most
part as unchanging,” she said. “But there’s a whole literature out there
that says it changes over time.”
The idea upends conventional thinking based on Americans’ lives of
100 years ago, when young people typically got married at age 18 and had
their first child at 19. Today, young adults leave home for college.
Then they take jobs. They marry later in life and have children even
later.
During that transition, Margolis wrote, whatever religion they had
fades into the background and they begin to form a political
sensibility. Only when they’re ready to settle down and have a family
does religion re-enter the picture.
“When it comes time to make religious decisions in adulthood, we have these formed partisan identities,” Margolis said.
Sharpening this political-religious split is the fact that many white
Americans who end up as Democrats don’t come back to church, while
Republicans tend to become more religious to better align with their
political convictions. (She concedes the theory does not apply to
African-Americans, who are highly religious and vote solidly for
Democrats.)
“It may seem counterintuitive, if not downright implausible, that
voting Democrat or Republican could change something as personal as our
relationship with God,” Margolis wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. “But over the course of our lives, political choices tend to come first, religious choices second.”
nakedcapitalism |Michael Palmieri: So,
Michael we’ve talked a little bit about the different indicators that
point towards a financial crisis. It’s also clear from what you just
stated from a regulatory standpoint that the U.S. is extremely
vulnerable. Back in 2008 many argue that there was a huge opportunity
lost in terms of transforming our private banking system to a publicly
owned banking system. Recently the Democracy Collaborative published a
report titled,The Crisis Next Time: Planning for Public ownership as Alternative to Corporate Bailouts.
That was put out by Thomas Hanna. He was calling for a transition from
private to public banking. He also made the point, which you’ve made in
earlier episodes, that it’s not a question of ifanother financial crisis is going to occur, but when.
Can you speak a little bit about how public banking as an alternative
would differ from the current corporate private banking system we have
today?
Michael Hudson: Sure. I’m
actually part of the Democracy Collaborative. The best way to think
about this is that suppose that back in 2008, Obama and Wall Street
bagman Tim Geithner had not blocked Sheila Bair from taking over
Citigroup and other insolvent banks. She wrote that Citigroup had
gambled with money and were incompetent, and outright crooked. She
wanted to take them over.
Now suppose that Citibank would had been taken over by the government
and operated as a public bank. How would a public bank have operated
differently from Citibank?
For one thing, a public entity wouldn’t make corporate
takeover loans and raids. They wouldn’t lend to payday loan sharks.
Instead they’d make local branches so that people didn’t have to go to
payday loan sharks, but could borrow from a local bank branch or a post
office bank in the local communities that are redlined by the big banks.
A public entity wouldn’t make gambling loans for derivatives. What a public bank woulddo
is what’s called the vanilla bread-and-butter operation of serving
small depositors, savers and consumers. You let them have checking
accounts, you clear their checks, pay their bills automatically, but you
don’t make gambling and financial loans.
Banks have sort of turned away from small customers.
They’ve certainly turned away from the low-income neighborhoods, and
they’re not even lending to businesses anymore. More and more American
companies are issuing their own commercial paper to avoid the banks. In
other words, a company will issue an IOU itself, and pay interest more
than pension funds or mutual funds can get from the banks. So the money
funds such as Vanguard are buying commercial paper from these companies,
because the banks are not making these loans.
So a public bank would do what banks are supposed to do productively,
which is to help finance basic production and basic consumption, but
not financial gambling at the top where all the risk is. That’s the
business model of the big banks, and some will lose money and crash like
in 2008. A public bank wouldn’t make junk mortgage loans. It wouldn’t
engage in consumer fraud. It wouldn’t be like Wells Fargo. It wouldn’t
be like Citibank. This is so obvious that what is needed is a bank whose
business plan is not exploitation of consumers, not fraud, and isn’t
gambling. That basically is the case for public ownership.
urbanfaith | In the Black Church it is popular to give leaders a free pass.
Usually when someone dares to speak out against someone in ministry they
are quick to hear “Touch not mine anointed” or “Don’t put your mouth on
the man of God.” The idea is that God calls the preacher/pastor and
therefore he is answerable only to God. Therefore there is no
accountability between him/her and the congregation or other pastors.
Having been in the pastor role myself I believe that we should give
pastors the respect they deserve because it is a tiresome and demanding
job to shepherd a faith community. At the same time, I think that when
the pastor breaks some of the standards for a Christian leader outlined
in the New Testament (1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9) someone should call
them to account for their actions.
But is it right for a pastor to let another pastor know when they are
out of line? Is it right for church members to correct their pastor?
Based on scriptural principles and examples the answer to both questions
is an emphatic “Yes!” In regard to church members calling their leaders
to account we can examine 1 Timothy 5:19-20.
Here Paul lets Timothy know that he is not to receive an accusation
against an elder unless two or three witnesses can support it. By
stating how these accusations are to be received these verses assume
that accusations can be brought against an elder or church leader.
In regard to pastors calling other pastors to account Paul provides
an excellent example. When Peter shows prejudice against the Gentiles at
Antioch, Paul rebukes him to his face Galatians 2:11-12.
Paul went in on Peter in front of everyone! Paul was also vocal in
calling out false teachers. He warns Timothy not to follow in the
footsteps of Hymenaeus and Alexander in regards to his Christian faith 1 Timothy 1:19-20. Notice that he calls them out by name. Paul also calls out Hymenaeus and Philetus in 2 Timothy 2:17-18.
When leaders are out of line other leaders need to publicly let them
know. When leaders are out of line their followers need to let them
know. One thing that needs to be taken into consideration is whether
the preachers have been given the opportunity to change. The site warns
others of their faults and sins but is there a way to offer grace and
restore these fallen pastors.
Another thing that we do not know is whether the church members have
already addressed these issues with the pastor according to Matthew 18:15-17.
Pimppreacher.com has taken it upon themselves to be an advocate for
those who feel abused by their pastor but have the members themselves
done the biblical thing and talked it out with the offenders. This would
be the best way to handle these situations.
What do you think? Should pastors be held accountable by other
pastors? Should pastors be held accountable by other members? Is a site
like pimppreacher.com necessary?
eand | Capitalism is produced by socialism. It socializes losses. It privatizes gains. It needs social investment and support to keep doing both, in fact. Why? And why do we let it? Why does capitalism always seem to need capital from society to plow on, and losses to socialize right back — which also means that a noble laissez faire state of capitalist nature is an old wives’ tale? Whether it’s armies to enforce slaves, bailouts for banks, or loans for the American Dream (no blacks allowed, please)?
“Capitalism” is really just a way to say that “governments support private ownership of things.” Sometimes, those things are factories, sometimes they’re bonds, and sometimes, quite terribly, they’re even other people. But note the wrinkle. The job of a “government”, as far as “capitalism” is concerned, is to keep privately owned things running, going, operating — and yet that alone says that capital can’t really exist by itself. Who’ll do the work of quelling the slave rebellion? Of funding the frontier? Of bailing out the hedge funds? Who’ll pipe that house and pave those roads? Yet without those, capitalism would have ceased to function in the blink of an eye, time after time. Without social investment and support, capitalism would stop overnight — even in America. Imagine if the skies turned black, or the phone lines went down, or the internet became gobbledygook, or the trees attacked us, instead of stood there pleasantly, giving us air to breathe.
That means that “capitalism” is a system of a very specific kind. One where those who have the least capital are always subsidizing those who already have the most of it — and hoping for a little bit in return. And that means that those already who have the most capital will always win. Imagine that you have a hundred times more money than me. Won’t you have the power to demand all kinds of concessions from me? Imagine you have a hundred times more social capital than me. Won’t that make your power over me even greater? And so on. And yet here I am, not just begging you for a job — but subsidizing you while I’m doing it, paying for that bailout, paying back that extortionate interest, paying for the democracy which keep your contracts worth a dime while you wreck it, and so forth.
The problem, then, is a kind of paradox. “Capitalism” means the job of a government is that society supports and nurtures, protects and subsidizes, the capitalist, not vice versa. But the capitalist is the one who already owns the most, by definition. He has the least to lose. He has the most information. He can buy up all your alternatives. So this idea of governance itself means the capitalist always wins — because the government is enforcing his rule now: those who have the most capital receive the most capital, and those who have none receive none.
That is why the history of capitalism seem always to be those who already have the most capital amassing the most, and those who have the least amassing the least. Not any specific individual — but certainly amongst social groups. It’s not a coincidence that American billionaires are mostly white men — and white men were slaveowners, not slaves. Whites amassed so much capital thanks to slavery that they still hold ten times more, on average, than blacks. So of course it’s vastly more likely that whites will be billionaires, or even millionaires. Capitalism is a construction of socialism — a system in which society subsidizes those who own the most, not vice versa.
Isn’t that what’s happened in America today? Late on your bills? We’ll hunt you down. Bad credit? Kiss a home goodbye. Can’t afford your deductible? Too bad, I guess the cancer’s going to get you. The government is enforcing the capitalist’s rule — whomever has the most capital receives most, and whomever has the least loses the most, or at best, wins the least.
strategic-culture | The AP headlined on July 27th"#MeToo reaches Vatican as nuns denounce abuse from priests” and reported that the Vatican has continued to tolerate rape by its priests, and: Revelations
that a prominent US cardinal sexually abused and harassed his adult
seminarians have exposed an egregious abuse of power that has shocked
Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic. But the Vatican has long been
aware of its heterosexual equivalent — the sexual abuse of nuns by
priests and bishops — and done little to stop it, an Associated Press
analysis has found.
More
people receive their morality from the Roman Catholic Church than from
any other (or from any scientific basis); and, so, it is remarkable that
this sort of exploitation is allowed to continue on, for decade after
decade, and the pews not to be emptied-out by these and other ongoing
church-scandals. However, if those congregants will then go to different
denominations, will the results be any different? Many, if not most,
faiths (especially the most conservative ones) have been revealed to be
equally exploitative and tolerant of exploitation. Obviously, the
problem here isn’t only the Roman Catholic Church. It goes far deeper
than that. Throwing stones from glass houses against glass houses can’t
help anyone but will only make things worse for everybody. The problem
here is the supremacist culture, which exists everywhere, and which
oppresses everywhere.
It
is reflected in the politics of every nation; and it
is especially reflected in the essentially lawless “Wild West” that
constitutes the relations between nations — the field where wars and
mass-killing, and military invasions and occupations, occur and are
accepted by the perpetrator-countries, the invading and occupying
nations, as if there were some sort of ‘right’ to perpetrate such
things, for example, as was the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003
on the part of the invading and occupying nations.
The
deeper problem is that there is no right by anyone to invade anywhere.
There is no right that any clergy-person has to deceive or violently to
force any person to do anything, and there also is no right that any
nation has to rape another.
My July 19th article, “Vladimir Putin’s Basic Disagreement with The West” presented
that “disagreement” as being between Putin’s commitment to the idea
that only the residents in a given land-area can ever rightfully have
sovereignty there, versus The West’s commitment to the idea that
foreigners can have a right — maybe even a higher right — to sovereignty
over that land.
Two
representatives of the view that controls in The West were quoted
there, at length, in defense of the asserted right of foreigners to
control a government: Cecil Rhodes during the 1800s, and George Soros during the 21st Century.
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